Growing up in Ramsey, Rob Alsberg had often heard stories about his grandfather's passion for taking home movies, including filming the charred remains of the luxury liner Morro Castle as it smoldered off the beach in Asbury Park 75 years ago.

For more than 50 years, the tin canister holding that rare footage lay sandwiched between mundane family shots in his mother's basement, a poor environment for the fragile celluloid film. With no way to view the 16mm film, Alsberg kept the family movies stored at his new home in New Hampshire for another 20 years before finally cracking open the lid to the canister labeled "Morro Castle."

Spring Lake Historical SocietyThe Morro Castle burned off the Jersey Shore on Sept. 8, 1934. An Asbury Park commemoration of the 75th anniversary will include film footage of the disaster.

What he found, local historians say, is one of the longest known pieces of footage capturing the aftermath of the maritime disaster, among the worst in U.S. history.

"It was immediately obvious what I was looking at," said Alsberg, 43, recounting the day three years ago he used a newly purchased projector from a surplus store to watch the 10-minute segment. "It was a jawdropping moment knowing I had this quasi-historical film."

The film, a copy of which is now in the possession of the Asbury Park Historical Society, is a coup for historians because it puts meat on the skeleton of newspaper accounts describing the Sept. 8, 1934, disaster, which claimed 137 lives and revolutionized maritime safety regulations.

Home movie footage of the luxury liner Morro Castle disaster

Alsberg's home movie is incorporated into a week of events in Asbury Park commemorating the 75th an- niversary of the Morro Castle fire, which set in motion lifesaving attempts across nearly eight miles of coastline in Monmouth County.

On Tuesday, a monument will be dedicated on the south end of Convention Hall, near the spot where the burned-out hulk sat beached for six months before it was finally towed away. On Saturday, the historical society is sponsoring an educational program at the Paramount Theater about the doomed vessel.

The film shows the city's firefighters, dwarfed by the ship, hosing down the smoking liner. Alsberg's grandfather, Edwin Alsberg, filmed an unidentified man making his way to the stern of the ship on a breeches buoy -- a harness attached to a rope stretched between the ship and Convention Hall. The film captures a plane and an autogiro, akin to a helicopter, flying overhead, presumably to determine whether more bodies languished in the ocean.

The Morro Castle, which made weekly trips between New York and Havana, was steaming north off the coast of New Jersey when fire broke out in the closet of a writing room -- a small lounge used by passengers for composing messages -- around 3 a.m., a few hours before it was scheduled to dock in the Port of New York. A nor'easter drove the disabled vessel close to shore near Spring Lake as desperate passengers and crew tried to escape the flames. The few lifeboats that were launched carried mostly crew members to safety.

Survivors were triaged at the fire department in Spring Lake, and a makeshift morgue was set up at the Sea Girt training camp.

About a quarter of the 548 passengers and crew burned to death on the ship or drowned trying to get ashore. As the vessel was being towed to New York the following day, it broke free of its line and drifted south until it became beached off Asbury Park.

Don Stine, a trustee of the Asbury Park Historical Society, said he's seen a few home movies of the beached Morro Castle, but none was as long as Alsberg's or provided as comprehensive an account of the spectacle, which drew hundreds of thousands of curious onlookers to the resort town in a single weekend.

"Most people don't know much about the Morro Castle. They know the picture of it, but they really don't know the story," Stine said. "In American maritime history, this was the most important shipwreck."

While far fewer people died than in other sea disasters -- 1,523 lost their lives in the sinking of the famed British liner Titanic 22 years earlier -- the Morro Castle fire exposed so many deficiencies in the regulation of passenger ships that the U.S. government implemented a massive overhaul of safety rules.

It covered everything from how ships were constructed to make them more fireproof to changing the way life jackets were made to prevent injuries.

Gary Crawford, a local historian from Neptune, takes a special interest in the Morro Castle because his great aunt, Ethel Mae Carty, was married to the ship's first assistant radio operator, George Alagna, who was initially accused of starting the fire.

Crawford said oceanfront businesses in Asbury Park usually closed after Labor Day, but many owners, hurting from the effects of the Great Depression, remained open to capitalize on the sudden influx of tourists.

"The merchants were making money hand over fist," he said.

Even residents got entrepreneurial by charging visitors to park in their front yards, Crawford said. Photographers sold 8-by-10 photographs of the Morro Castle for $1, which would be today's equivalent of $50 or more, he said.

Business was so brisk in Asbury Park that the city council even privately considered buying, leasing or laying claim to the stricken vessel, Crawford said.

The Morro Castle spawned the popular practice of "cruising the circuit" -- looping the two roads closest to the oceanfront -- in Asbury Park, said Tom Gilmour, director of commerce for the city. The traffic created by tourists seeking a glimpse of the beached ship forced city officials to turn Ocean and Kingsley avenues into one-way streets. The roadways were returned to two-way streets about two years ago with the new oceanfront redevelopment.

For all the heartbreak and outrage spurred by the deadly fire, Crawford said it's strange no monument was erected sooner to mark the historic event anywhere along the miles of beaches between Belmar and Point Pleasant where the luxury liner deposited its victims.

"It's 75 years too late," he said. "Except for Asbury Park having it beached there, I guess it belongs to the Jersey Shore more than to any one town."